by Edmund Burke
The Norman Conquest is the great era of our laws. At this time the English jurisprudence, which had hitherto continued a poor stream, fed from some few, and those scanty sources, was all at once, as from a mighty flood, replenished with a vast body of foreign learning, by which, indeed, it might be said rather to have been increased than much improved: for this foreign law, being imposed, not adopted, for a long time bore strong appearances of that violence by which it had been first introduced. All our monuments bear a strong evidence to this change. New courts of justice, new names and powers of officers, in a word, a new tenure of land as well as new possessors of it, took place. Even the language of public proceedings was in a great measure changed.
Book Reviews in the Annual Register
Between 1759 and 1761 Burke wrote book reviews for the extremely popular Annual Register. Included here are reviews of three important eighteenth-century writers: Rousseau, Adam Smith, and Hume. Of particular interest is the generally favorable tone of his two Rousseau reviews, given his later, post-French Revolution opinions on Rousseau.
A LETTER FROM M. Rousseau of Geneva, to M. d’Alembert, of Paris, concerning the effects of theatrical entertainments on the manners of mankind. None of the present writers have a greater share of talents and learning than Rousseau; yet it has been his misfortune and that of the world, that those of his works which have made the greatest noise, and acquired to their author the highest reputation, have been of little real use or emolument to mankind. A tendency to paradox, which is always the bane of solid learning, and threatens now to destroy it, a splenetic disposition carried to misanthropy, and an austere virtue pursued to an unsociable fierceness, have prevented a great deal of the good effects which might be expected from such a genius. A satire upon civilized society, a satire upon learning, may make a tolerable sport for an ingenious fancy; but if carried farther it can do no more (and that in such a way is surely too much) than to unsettle our notions of right and wrong, and lead by degrees to universal scepticism. His having before attempted two such subjects, must make his attack upon the stage far less formidable than otherwise it would have been. This last subject has been often discussed before him; more good pieces have been written against the stage than in its favour; but this is by far the most ingenious, spirited, and philosophical performance that ever appeared on theatrical entertainments. The author has placed the matter in a light almost wholly new. So far as his remarks relate to small and indigent states in general, and to that of Geneva in particular, they are as just as they are ingenious; but with regard to the stage writers and performers in nations not so circumstanced, he seems to have pushed his objections much too far. There are certainly plays which show, that the stage may at least be made as innocent as any other public entertainments; as innocent as his favourite entertainment of dancing; and there are actors of both sexes, who (though it must be admitted their situation is a little dangerous) have proved by their conduct the injustice of his assertion, which makes vice inseparable from their profession, and its infamy not created, but only declared by the laws....
Emilius and Sophia: or, A new System of Education. Translated from the French of J. J. Rousseau, Citizen of Geneva. The fault most generally observed in discourses upon education, is a tendency to commonplace. Nothing, in fact, can be more trite, than the greatest part of the observations, which have been retailed upon that subject from Quintilian down to Monsieur Rollin. This is however the fault, into which the ingenious author of Emilius is, of all others, in the least danger of falling. To know what the received notions are upon any subject, is to know with certainty what those of Rousseau are not. In his treatise on the inequality amongst mankind, he has shown his man in a natural state; in his Emilius he undertakes to educate him. In the prosecution of this design he begins early, and carefully attends his pupil from his cradle to his marriage-bed. He forms him to morals, to science, to knowledge of men, and to natural labour, and at length gives him a wife, whom he has previously educated for him according to ideas a little different from that model which he has formed in his Eloise.
In this system of education there are some very considerable parts that are impracticable, others that are chimerical; and not a few highly blameable, and dangerous both to piety and morals. It is easy to discern how it has happened, that this book should be censured as well at Geneva as in Paris. However, with those faults in the design, with the whimsies into which his paradoxical genius continually hurries him, there are a thousand noble hints relative to his subject, grounded on a profound knowledge of the human mind, and the order of its operations. There are many others, which, though they have little relation to the subject, are admirable on their own account; and even, in his wildest sal-lies, we now and then discover strokes of the most solid sense, and instructions of the most useful nature. Indeed he very seldom thinks himself bound to adhere to any settled order or design, but is borne away by every object started by his vivid imagination, and hurries continually from system to system, in the career of an animated, glowing, exuberant style, which paints everything with great minuteness, yet with infinite spirit.
There is, it must be acknowledged, one considerable defect in his judgment, which infects both his matter and his style. He never knows where to stop. He seldom can discover that precise point in which excellence consists, where to exceed is almost as bad as to fall short, and which every step you go beyond, you grow worse and worse. He is therefore frequently tiresome and disgusting by pushing his notions to excess; and by repeating the same thing in a thousand different ways. Poverty can hardly be more vicious than such an abundance....
The Theory of Moral Sentiments, by Adam Smith. It is very difficult, if not impossible, consistently with the brevity of our design, to give the reader a proper idea of this excellent work. A dry abstract of the system would convey no juster idea of it, than the skeleton of a departed beauty would of her form when she was alive; at the same time the work is so well methodized, the parts grow so naturally and gracefully out of each other, that it would be doing it equal injustice to show it by broken and detached pieces....
There have been of late many books written on our moral duties, and our moral sensations. One would have thought the matter had been exhausted. But this author has struck out a new, and at the same time a perfectly natural road of speculation on this subject. Had it been only an ingenious novelty on any other subject, it might have been praised; but with regard to morals, nothing could be more dangerous. We conceive, that here the theory is in all its essential parts just, and founded on truth and nature. The author seeks for the foundation of the just, the fit, the proper, the decent, in our most common and most allowed passions; and making approbation and disapprobation the tests of virtue and vice, and showing that those are founded on sympathy, he raises from this simple truth, one of the most beautiful fabrics of moral theory, that has perhaps ever appeared. The illustrations are numerous and happy, and show the author to be a man of uncommon observation. His language is easy and spirited, and puts things before you in the fullest light; it is rather painting than writing....
The History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Accession of Henry VII ... By David Hume. Our writers had commonly so ill succeeded in history, the Italians and even the French had so long continued our acknowledged superiors, that it was almost feared that the British genius, which had so happily displayed itself in every other kind of writing, and had gained the prize in most, yet could not enter the lists in this. The historical work Mr. Hume first published, discharged our country from this opprobrium.
This very ingenious and elegant writer is certainly a very profound thinker. The idea of the growth, as I may call it, of our present constitution seems to be the principle of the whole work completed by the part now published, which is written in the same bold masterly manner as the two formerly published; and though in point of time it precedes them, is possibly, in reason, but a consequence of the other two; and the three parts, we imagine, may wit
h propriety enough be read in the order the ingenious author has chosen to publish them.
It is natural that the line, which is always kept to its utmost length, must break at last; and probably in its recoil hurt them who endeavour to keep it at full stretch; and so it fared with the Stuarts, who, we imagine with this ingenious author, erred not so much in extending the prerogative, as in not having had sagacity enough to see that they had fallen in the times, when, from the opinions and fashions of the age, it behoved them to slacken and remit of the authority exercised by their predecessors.
The second work, which appeared, certainly showed that the Tudors had not left it in the power of any other family to carry the prerogative higher than they had done. They left it to their successors, adorned and supported with every sanction, which custom, and which, in many cases, legal institution, could give it.
The third part seems to evince, that this pitch, which the prerogative had attained, was not the effect of the abilities, or the violence, of this or that family, so much as the natural course of things.
If the periods of the history first published interested our passions more, the curiosity of the learned will be more gratified in that now before us. It will be curious to observe from what a strange chaos of liberty and tyranny, of anarchy and order, the constitution, we are now blessed with, has at length arisen....
No man perhaps has come nearer to that so requisite and so rare a quality in an historian of unprejudiced partiality....
Speech on the Repeal of the Marriage Act
In 1781 Burke spoke during an important parliamentary debate concerned with changes in the marriage laws, specifically the age when marriage could occur without parental consent. His comments provide interesting glimpses of Burke’s attitudes to these two most important traditional institutions, marriage and family.
THIS ACT [the Marriage Act] stands upon two principles: one, that the power of marrying without consent of parents should not take place till twenty-one years of age; the other, that all marriages should be public.
The proposition of the honorable mover goes to the first; and undoubtedly his motives are fair and honorable; and even in that measure by which he would take away paternal power, he is influenced to it by filial piety; and he is led into it by a natural, and to him inevitable, but real mistake,—that the ordinary race of mankind advance as fast towards maturity of judgment and understanding as he does.
The question is not now, whether the law ought to acknowledge and protect such a state of life as minority, nor whether the continuance which is fixed for that state be not improperly prolonged in the law of England. Neither of these in general are questioned. The only question is, whether matrimony is to be taken out of the general rule, and whether the minors of both sexes, without the consent of their parents, ought to have a capacity of contracting the matrimonial, whilst they have not the capacity of contracting any other engagement. Now it appears to me very clear that they ought not. It is a great mistake to think that mere animal propagation is the sole end of matrimony. Matrimony is instituted not only for the propagation of men, but for their nutrition, their education, their establishment, and for the answering of all the purposes of a rational and moral being; and it is not the duty of the community to consider alone of how many, but how useful citizens it shall be composed.
It is most certain that men are well qualified for propagation long before they are sufficiently qualified even by bodily strength, much less by mental prudence, and by acquired skill in trades and professions, for the maintenance of a family. Therefore to enable and authorize any man to introduce citizens into the commonwealth, before a rational security can be given that he may provide for them and educate them as citizens ought to be provided for and educated, is totally incongruous with the whole order of society. Nay, it is fundamentally unjust; for a man that breeds a family without competent means of maintenance incumbers other men with his children, and disables them so far from maintaining their own. The improvident marriage of one man becomes a tax upon the orderly and regular marriage of all the rest. Therefore those laws are wisely constituted that give a man the use of all his faculties at one time, that they may be mutually subservient, aiding and assisting to each other: that the time of his completing his bodily strength, the time of mental discretion, the time of his having learned his trade, and the time at which he has the disposition of his fortune, should be likewise the time in which he is permitted to introduce citizens into the state, and to charge the community with their maintenance. To give a man a family during his apprenticeship, whilst his very labor belongs to another,—to give him a family, when you do not give him a fortune to maintain it,—to give him a family before he can contract any one of those engagements without which no business can be carried on, would be to burden the state with families without any security for their maintenance. When parents themselves marry their children, they become in some sort security to prevent the ill consequences. You have this security in parental consent; the state takes its security in the knowledge of human nature. Parents ordinarily consider little the passion of their children and their present gratification. Don’t fear the power of a father: it is kind to passion to give it time to cool. But their censures sometimes make me smile,—sometimes, for I am very infirm, make me angry: sœpe bilem, sœpejocum movent.
It gives me pain to differ on this occasion from many, if not most, of those whom I honor and esteem. To suffer the grave animadversion and censorial rebuke of the honorable gentleman who made the motion, of him whose good-nature and good sense the House look upon with a particular partiality, whose approbation would have been one of the highest objects of my ambition,—this hurts me. It is said the Marriage Act is aristocratic. I am accused, I am told abroad, of being a man of aristocratic principles. If by aristocracy they mean the peers, I have no vulgar admiration, nor any vulgar antipathy towards them; I hold their order in cold and decent respect. I hold them to be of an absolute necessity in the Constitution; but I think they are only good when kept within their proper bounds. I trust, whenever there has been a dispute between these Houses, the part I have taken has not been equivocal. If by the aristocracy (which, indeed, comes nearer to the point) they mean an adherence to the rich and powerful against the poor and weak, this would, indeed, be a very extraordinary part. I have incurred the odium of gentlemen in this House for not paying sufficient regard to men of ample property. When, indeed, the smallest rights of the poorest people in the kingdom are in question, I would set my face against any act of pride and power countenanced by the highest that are in it; and if it should come to the last extremity, and to a contest of blood,—God forbid! God forbid!—my part is taken: I would take my fate with the poor and low and feeble. But if these people came to turn their liberty into a cloak for maliciousness, and to seek a privilege of exemption, not from power, but from the rules of morality and virtuous discipline, then I would join my hand to make them feel the force which a few united in a good cause have over a multitude of the profligate and ferocious.
I wish the nature of the ground of repeal were considered with a little attention. It is said the act tends to accumulate, to keep up the power of great families, and to add wealth to wealth. It may be that it does so. It is impossible that any principle of law or government useful to the community should be established without an advantage to those who have the greatest stake in the country. Even some vices arise from it. The same laws which secure property encourage avarice; and the fences made about honest acquisition are the strong bars which secure the hoards of the miser. The dignities of magistracy are encouragements to ambition, with all the black train of villanies which attend that wicked passion. But still we must have laws to secure property, and still we must have ranks and distinctions and magistracy in the state, notwithstanding their manifest tendency to encourage avarice and ambition.
By affirming the parental authority throughout the state, parents in high rank will generally aim at, and will sometimes have the means,
too, of preserving their minor children from any but wealthy or splendid matches. But this authority preserves from a thousand misfortunes which embitter every part of every man’s domestic life, and tear to pieces the dearest ties in human society.
I am no peer, nor like to be,—but am in middle life, in the mass of citizens; yet I should feel for a son who married a prostituted woman, or a daughter who married a dishonorable and prostituted man, as much as any peer in the realm.
